Pathfinder User Manual

Minimum System requirements

Recommended System requirements

Navigating the 3D View

Several tools are provided for navigating through the model in the 3D view, including orbit, roam, pan, and zoom tools.

The main navigation tool for the 3D view is the Orbit tool, .

Another navigation tool in the 3D view is the Roam tool, . This tool allows the camera to move in and out of the model at will. It has a higher learning curve but is the most flexible viewing tool because it allows the camera to be placed anywhere in the model. This tool can work in three different modes. In the first two modes, the movement speed of the camera can be changed by holding CTRL and spinning the mouse wheel up or down. Spin it up to increase the speed and down to decrease the speed.

The other navigation tools include a Pan/Drag tool, which moves the camera left and right and up and down, a zoom tool, which zooms in and out of the model while click-dragging, and a zoom box tool, which allows a box to be drawn that specifies the zoom extents.

Pathfinder can also be navigated while using the Selection/Manipulation tool, . To Orbit the camera while in perspective view, use a right-click and drag combination. Similarly, use a middle-click and drag to Pan in perspective view.

Navigating the 2D view

Navigation in the 2D view is simpler than in the 3D view. The selection tool not only allows objects to be selected if single-clicked, but it allows the view to be panned by middle or right-clicking and dragging, and the view to be zoomed by using the scroll wheel. The drag and zoom tools are also separated into separate tools for convenience.

Resetting the view

At any time, the camera can be reset by pressing CTRL+R on the keyboard, or selecting Reset All tool, . This will cause the entire model to be visible in the current view. For all navigation tools but the Roam tool, reset will make the camera look down the negative Z axis at the model. For the roam tool, however, reset will make the camera look along the positive Y axis at the model.

The camera can also be reset to the current selection at any time by pressing CTRL+E. This will cause the camera to zoom in on the selected objects and the orbit tool to rotate about the center of their bounding sphere.

Filling the view

Very similar to resetting the camera, the view can be fit by pressing F on the keyboard or selecting the Fill View tool, . The difference between the Fill View and Reset All tools is that filling the screen does not change the view angle of the camera. Instead the camera will recenter/rezoom to fit the screen.

Drawing in the 3D and 2D views

Drawing can be performed in both the 3D view and the top 2D view. The 3D view allows the user to see the model from any angle, but most tools restrict drawing in the XY plane. The top view completely restricts drawing to the XY plane, but it also displays an optional snap grid. The snap grid size can be set under Edit snap grid in the View menu, and it can be turned off by deselecting Show Snap Grid in the View menu.

Drawing is performed in one of the two following modes:

At any time while drawing, the user can press ESC, which causes the current object to be cancelled and the previous navigation tool to be selected.

For each tool there are often two ways to create its object.

The property panel will update the graphical preview immediately to reflect changes in the input. This allows fine-grained control in creating the object. The individual drawing tools are discussed in Creating Movement Space.

Snapping

Snapping is one way to precisely draw and edit objects. It is the process of finding some element in the scene, such as a vertex or edge close to the cursor, and snapping the cursor to that element like a magnet.

In Pathfinder, snapping can be performed against objects in the model and orthographic constraints. The 2D View additionally provides a sketch grid and polar (angle) constraints. If a snap point is found, an indicator dot, shown in Figure 10, will appear at the snap point.

By default, snapping is enabled. It can be disabled by holding ALT on the keyboard while using a drawing/editing tool.

Render Options

In the toolbar above the properties window in the 2D and 3D views, there is a drop-down as shown in Figure 11 and buttons as shown in Figure 12 that control how geometry is rendered.

From left to right, the buttons are:

Occupant Display

Occupants can be displayed using a number of options. They can be viewed as simple shapes, including disks and cylinders. They can also be displayed as the artist’s mannequin or as their respective human avatars specified in their profiles. These options are available under View menu and Occupant Display submenu.

When occupants are not viewed as people, they can also be colored in several ways, available under View→Occupant Color:

Coloring Rooms

Rooms can be colored in a variety of ways. All coloring options are available under the View menu and Color Rooms submenu. Rooms can be colored by the following options:

Room Opacity

Sometimes it is useful to be able to see through rooms and stairways, such as when drawing on top of an imported background image. To change the opacity of a set of components, select them and in the property panel, change the opacity. Opacity settings will carry through to 3D results visualization.

Creating sub-groups

Sub-groups can be created under all groups (floors are discussed in Floors.) Groups can also be created in other sub-groups.

To create a new group:

Changing groups

An object can be moved from one group to another at any time.

To change an object’s group:

Keyboard Shortcut Editor

The Keyboard Shortcut Editor Window can be found in the File→Preferences dialog and clicking Edit Actions and tools can are bound to a combination of modifier keys (ALT, CTRL, SHIFT, etc.) and other key presses.

The dialog is split into sections similar to those used in the Pathfinder toolbar menus. There are additional tabs for shortcuts related to tool activation, object selection, and context sensitive actions.

To change a shortcut, click on cell in the Key Press column and a window launches (Figure 15) with four different options.

Object Sets

When specifying a set of items, such as the doors an occupant is allowed to use, the Figure 16 is shown.

The list in this dialog shows the items in the model that can be chosen. Click the checkbox next to the item in the list to select the item. Alternately, click the checkbox in the header of this list to select or deselect all items currently displayed in the list.

Click OK to commit the selected items.

Sometimes, the list of items might be quite long, making it difficult to quicky find the desired items. There are several ways to limit the displayed items, however. At the top of the dialog is a search field. Typing in this field will limit the list of items to only those that partially contain the entered text. To match the name of an object exactly, surround the text with quotes. For example "Door01" will show only the doors that have exactly the name, Door01. This search field also allows wildcards including the following:

For example, typing Door?1 would find objects with the following names: Door01, Door51a, Exit Door91 (south), etc. It would not, however, find the following: Door001, Door9221, etc. Typing Door*1, however, would find those.

Another way to limit the displayed item is to check the box next to Show only selected rows. This will only show items that have already been selected. By default, when the Set Chooser dialog opens, if there are selected items in a long list, Show only selected rows will be automatically selected so it’s easy to see the current selection.

The following additional options are also available:

Discrete Distributions

Pathfinder also allows discrete distributions of objects in certains cases. For example, the Change Behavior action allows occupants to change their behavior by choosing a random behavior from a discrete distribution. Occupants might have a 30% chance of choosing Behavior01 and 70% chance of choosing Behavior02. The Figure 17 allows these distributions to be specified.

In this dialog, the probability of choosing a value can be entered into the first column. The second column shows the name of each available item. The sum of the values in first column must add to 100%.

As in the Set Chooser dialog described above, the displayed items can be filtered either by typing text into the search field at the top of the dialog or by clicking Display only non-zero rows, which only shows rows that have non-zero probabilities. In addition, Show group labels can be checked to show the names of the groups next to the item names in the list, such as "BehaviorGroup01→Behavior01".

The distribution dialog has some additional actions that can be used to clear values or distribute probabilities evenly among several items.

To set the probability of multiple items to 0.0%, click the Clear button and choose from one of the following options in the popup menu:

To distribute probability evenly across multiple rows, click the Distribute Evenly button and choose one of the following option in the popup menu:

Automatically Creating Floors

When nothing is selected in the model, the Floor Creation panel is shown, as in Figure 18. This panel controls the automatic creation of floors and automatic sorting of new objects into floors.

The following scenario demonstrates how objects are organized when auto-sort and auto-floor-creation are enabled (organization of the model is shown in Figure 19):

In this example, only rooms and stairs were created. The floors were automatically created and the rooms and stairs were automatically sorted into the appropriate ones.

Manually creating floors

Floors can also be created manually at any time.

There are two other options in this dialog:

By default, the name of the floor is Floor \(x\) where \(x\) is the working plane of the floor.

Manually Adding a New Floor

Changing the Active Floor

To change the active floor, click the floor drop-down box as shown in Figure 20, and select the desired floor. This will make that floor active and all other floors non-active.

Whenever the active floor is changed, the following additional changes take place in the model:

Showing All Floors

To show all floors click the floor drop-down box as shown in Figure 20, and click <Show All>.

This will additionally show all occupants on the floors and all sub-objects of the floors groups, and it will set the import filter to the union of all the floors' filters.

Floor Properties

To edit a floor’s properties, first select the desired floor. The property panel as shown in Figure 22 will appear, showing the floor’s name, its Working Z location, and the Z clipping planes (Z Min Filter and Z Max Filter) for imported 3D geometry.

It also shows some statistics of the floor including the total area of the floor (Area), number of people on the floor (Pers) and density of people. Refuge Area and Speed Modifier are discussed in Room Properties.

Adding New Rooms

Pathfinder provides two tools for adding new room geometry:

Left-click anywhere in the model to set the first point, and continue left clicking to add more points to the polygon. When at least three points are defined, right-clicking will close the polygon and complete the shape.

Alternatively, X,Y coordinates can be entered from the keyboard with the Add Point and Close Polygon buttons from the property panel.

The rectangular area can also be created by entering coordinates for two points in the property panel and clicking Create.

In addition to creating new areas, both of these tools can be used on existing geometry to create negative areas. Creating new geometry over existing areas removes any interfering portion from those areas. The newly created geometry can then be deleted, leaving the negative space behind. This is discussed further in the section, Arbitrarily-shaped obstructions (desks, tables, etc.).

Drawing Plane

Each room tool draws on a particular Z plane that is specified in the property panel for the tool as shown in Figure 25.

The Z plane can be specified either manually by typing the location into the Z Plane field or by picking the location from the 2D View or 3D View as follows:

Splitting Rooms

Rooms can be split into two or more pieces using the Thin Wall tool. To do this, specify the two points such that they are on the outermost boundary of the room to be divided. The original geometry will be divided into two or more new rooms with that line as the boundary between them as shown in Figure 27.

Dividing a Room

Separating and Merging Rooms

In addition to dividing rooms, Pathfinder has two additional means to aid in creating more complex room geometry.

To Merge rooms:

Merging rooms

To Separate a room:

Separating a room

Room Properties

To view and edit room properties, select a room. Its properties will be displayed in the property panel as shown in Figure 32.

Preventing Room-Crossing

In some cases, such as modeling seating rows or shops in a mall, it may be desirable to only allow occupants to exit the room and not cross through it. This can be accomplished by making all the doors connected to the room one-way (see Doors) and ensuring that their directions point out of the room. Pathfinder provides a tool to make this easy. Instead of individually setting the one-way status of all the connecting doors, perform the following:

Pathfinder will automatically calculate the correct directions for the doors to make the rooms exit-only or enter-only.

Mesh Optimization

Pathfinder performs automatic mesh optimization. An example of mesh optimization is removing multiple vertices in a straight line, or removing extra vertices left over after merging rooms. In some cases, it might be beneficial to disable mesh optimization.

To disable mesh optimization, select Preferences from the File menu, and uncheck Optimize Navigation Geometry.

Arbitrarily-Shaped Obstructions

To model an obstruction (e.g. an office desk or other standing obstacle) within a room, the subtractive property of rooms is used. This means that the room containing the obstruction must already exist.

To create the obstruction:

Creating an obstruction

Thin Walls

Thin, internal walls or boundaries can be added to rooms with the Thin Wall tool .

To use this tool, click two points in the model as shown in Figure 39. Pathfinder will attempt to connect these two points with an internal boundary edge.

Thick Walls

The wall tool is used to make rectangular obstructions in existing geometry (Figure 40).

To make a thick wall:

Creating Obstacles

Obstacles can be created several ways, including by using the Obstacle drawing tool and by converting an imported CAD object into an obstacle.

Creating polygonal obstacles

An obstacle can also be drawn as a polygon. To do so, perform the following:

1. Select the Add an Obstacle tool .
2. With the left mouse button, click several points defining the shape of the polygon.
3. Right-click to connect the last clicked point to the first and finish the obstacle.

If the all the clicked points were on room faces that share the same plane, that plane is used as the basis for the Search Volume. The search volume appears as a prism, aligned with the plane and extending slightly above and below the plane as shown in Figure 44.

If the clicked points are in faces that lie in different planes, the resulting Search Volume prism is aligned with the plane that maximizes the resulting area of the polygon when the points are projected onto the plane. If the drawing tool selects the wrong plane, right-click the obstacle and select Align Obstacle with Plane, which opens the Set Normal dialog. The correct plane can then be entered into the dialog or can be clicked in the 2D or 3D view.

Converting imported CAD objects into obstacles

Obstacles can also be created from imported CAD objects. This can be useful for visualizing the obstacle in a more realistic manner in Results and for automatically determining the Search Volume from the shape of the CAD geometry. See Figure 42 for examples of CAD obstacles.

To create an obstacle directly from an imported CAD object, perform the following:

1. Import the CAD file as described in Importing CAD Files.
2. Before extracting navigation components as described in Working with Imported Data, select the CAD objects that will represent obstacles. If multiple objects should represent a single obstacle, select only the objects that will become the obstacle.
3. Right-click the selected objects and select Convert to Transient Obstacle.
4. If multiple objects were selected, a prompt will ask whether to merge the selected objects into a single obstacle. Choose the desired answer. If the CAD objects are not merged, an obstacle will be created for each selected object.
5. Choose whether to delete the source objects. If deleted, the original objects will be effectively converted into obstacles. If not deleted, the original CAD objects will remain, and their geometry and display properties will be copied to the resulting obstacles.

The obstacles are then added to the Obstacles group in the Navigation View, with their group hierarchies mirroring that of the original imported CAD objects.

By default, the obstacles' Search Volumes will be linked to their CAD geometry as described in Obstacle Properties and are hidden from view. To view them, under the View menu, select Show Imported Obstacle Search Area. The images below show the search volumes hidden and visible. The area where the search volumes intersect the navigation mesh are always visible as long as the source obstacle is visible.

Obstacle Properties

To edit an obstacle’s properties, select the obstacle. Its properties will appear in the property panel as shown in Figure 47.

Thin Doors

Thin doors can be used to connect two rooms that touch one another as shown in Figure 51. A door is needed in this example to allow occupants to travel from one room to the other.

To create a door in this manner:

Thick Doors

Thick doors are often useful in realistic models, especially when CAD geometry has been imported. In real scenarios, rooms will not touch each other by infinitely thin walls as shown in Figure 53.

To create a thick door to connect these rooms:

When simulating, thick doors have a special representation: the area of the door will be partitioned in two, and each half is attached to its touching room. A thin door is placed in the middle of the area to represent the thick door.

Door Properties

To edit a door’s properties, select the door. Its properties will appear in the property panel as shown in Figure 55.

Door State

By default, all doors are always open throughout the simulation. To change this, click the link to the right of State.

The Edit Door State dialog will appear as shown in Figure 56. This dialog allows the initial state of the door to be specified as well as additional timed states.

As shown in the figure, for example, the door is initially open, closes at t=10 s, opens in +X direction at t=20 s, and then opens in both directions again at t=30 s.

Even though a door can only be travelled through in two possible directions, the drop-down box allows +X, -X, +Y, and -Y. When one of these directions is chosen, the actual direction Pathfinder chooses is the closest along the door’s normal.

Stairs Between Edges

One way to create stairs is to draw them between two pre-existing rooms. Stairs of this type will match the ends of the stairs exactly to the edges that they were drawn between, which means that the tread rise and run may or may not match the actual slope of the stairs. In Pathfinder, the speed on stairs is determined by the specified tread and run. The geometric slope of stairs is for display only and not used to calculate the speeds.

To create stairs between edges:

To change the display, you may:

Drawing stairs with the two-point stair tool

Stairs Extending from One Edge

Another way to create stairs is to have them extend from an edge and exactly match the specified tread rise and run. They will stop when they meet a specified criterion or reach another room.

The property panel for the one-click stair tool, as shown in Figure 62, provides four ways to terminate the stairs:

To create stairs in this manner:

After creating stairs in this manner, the Z location of the next floor or room will have to match the top of the stairs exactly for the next room to connect properly to the stairs. This can be done by clicking the top of the stairs in the 3D or 2D view when choosing the Z location for either the floor or next room.

After creating a one-click stair, you can only modify the stair by clicking the handles and dragging to existing geometry.

Stair Properties

Stairs have a number of properties that control their geometry and behavior of occupants that travel on them. When a stair is selected, these properties can be seen in the stair’s property panel as shown in Figure 64.

EVAC Elevators

EVAC elevators are intended to model egress-mode operation, which is based on current thinking described in Using Elevators In Fires (Bukowski and Li 2010).

The basic operation of elevators in evacuations can be summarized as follows:

SCAN Elevators

SCAN elevators are intended to model general-purpose elevator use. The basic operation of SCAN elevators can be summarized as follows:

The elevator will wait until it is called to service a floor. As soon as it is called, it will begin moving in the direction that it has been called from.

While the Elevator is moving, it will continue to travel in that direction as long as it has serviceable floors. Serviceable floors while the elevator is moving are:

Once the elevator no longer has any serviceable floors in the current direction, it will look for the furthest elevator call regardless of the direction it was called to travel in. It will first prioritize the furthest call in the same direction last traveled. If no call exists, it then will move to the furthest call in the opposite direction last traveled.

This behavior is intended to scan or sweep the elevator floors from end to end, giving relatively equal priority to each floor that the elevator is called to. Once there are no active service calls, the elevator will wait until called again.

Creating Elevators

Elevators can be made after creating the rest of the model.

Perform the following steps to create the elevator (refer to Figure 20):

If necessary, Pathfinder will automatically subtract holes in existing geometry to make space for the elevator shaft. It will also delete existing rooms, doors, stairs, and ramps in the elevator shaft. Pathfinder will ask before making any of these changes.

In order for occupants to use elevators, they must either be allowed to use elevators in their Profile under Restricted Components (see Movement Tab) or be explicitly told to do so through their behaviors, as discussed in Behaviors. Occupants can be encouraged to prefer elevators to stairs using the Elevator Wait Time Profile parameter (see Door Choice Tab).

Elevator Representation

Once an elevator is created, it will appear in the model as a series of "rooms" and doors connected by a transparent elevator shaft as shown in Figure 71. There is one room and set of doors for each floor to which the elevator can connect. In the 3D and 2D Views, each room is shaped the same as the base room that created the elevator. In the Navigation View, each room is shown under the elevator rather than the Floors top node, see Figure 72. In addition, each set of doors for the room is shown under the room. By default, each of the rooms is named after the floor on which it connects. If the elevator is disconnected completely from a floor as discussed in Connecting/Disconnecting floors, the room is named "<Disconnected Level>".

Elevator Properties

Once an elevator is created, the elevator’s properties can be edited by first selecting it from the navigation view or by ALT-clicking one of its rooms from the 2D or 3D view. Its properties can be edited in the property panel as shown in Figure 73.

The timing options shown are the same as those shown when creating the elevator. Initial Floor:: The floor at which the elevator deck will be located at the beginning of the simulation. Call Distance:: The distance away from the elevator door at which an occupant can call the elevator. Double-Deck:: Whether the elevator should use two connected decks to transport occupants. Please see Double-Deck Elevators for details.

Nominal Load

The nominal load is an estimate of the number of people that represent a full elevator load. The default value is based on an estimate of how many occupants of default size (diameter = 45.58 cm) would normally fill the elevator in steering mode. Increasing or decreasing the nominal load will cause occupants' sizes to be scaled up or down while they are on the elevator.

The scale factor (default: 1.0) is determined by a correlation to the density produced by the nominal load. This makes it possible to adjust loading while still accounting for differences in individual occupants' size.

In steering mode, the geometry of the elevator can lead to reduced loads (e.g. if the elevator is 2.8 persons wide). Please verify that the resulting (post-simulation) elevator loads match elevator manufacturer recommendations.

Connecting/Disconnecting Floors

When an elevator is created, by default it is connected to every floor its doors touch along the elevator shaft. Individual elevator doors can be disabled, however, to prevent entering/exiting the elevator through those doors on specific floors.

To do so:

To re-enable it, right-click the door from the Navigation View and select Enable.

Alternatively, right-click an elevator level and select Disable to disconnect all the elevator’s doors on that level, effectively preventing the elevator from picking up occupants on that level.

Call Sets

By default, each elevator is called individually. Elevators can be grouped into call sets, however, so that when one is called, all elevators in the call set respond and travel to the pickup level.

To create a call set:

All elevators in the group will be in the same call set as shown in Figure 77.

Double-Deck Elevators

Double-deck elevators use two connected decks to transport occupants, which increases the efficiency of moving occupants between floors. Occupants use a double-deck elevator similarly to a regular elevator.

After calling an elevator, the double-deck elevator arrives at the given floor, and the doors of its two decks open at the two adjacent floors (even and odd). When the decks are loaded, the double-deck elevator moves to either pickup or discharge at another set of floors.

Occupants traveling in a double-deck elevator can only discharge on a floor with the same parity that they entered from. Occupants that entered on the lower (even) deck will only be able to discharge on even-numbered elevator levels. Occupants that entered on the upper (odd) deck will only be able to discharge on odd-numbered elevator levels. If no such level exists, the occupants could become stuck if using the explicit Goto Elevators Action, and otherwise they will choose not to use the elevator while pathfinding.

After arriving at a floor to discharge, the elevator doors of both decks open, allowing occupants to leave both decks of the elevator.

There are several conditions that must be followed when using a double-deck elevator in Pathfinder:

Imported Objects

When a CAD file is imported, there may be many resulting objects. Depending on the type of imported file, there are various levels of information that may be imported for each resulting object. Each object has a name and always includes some geometric information, such as the 2D curves or 3D faces composing the object. For some files, such as IFC files, there may be even higher-level information such as whether the object is a door and the door’s width. Pathfinder uses this information to generate model elements as described in Working with Imported Data.

Common to all import objects is the ability to set some visual properties, such as color and opacity for each component of the geometry. The imported geometry is sent as-is to 3D Results, resulting in a clean and fast graphical representation of the data.

When an imported object is selected, its property panel appears as shown in Figure 84.

Imported objects have the following properties:

Importing IFC Files

IFC files provide building information model (BIM) data in a fully 3D format. This format contains advanced data about the types of objects in the building, including slabs, stairs, doors, etc., and it provides the smoothest workflow for converting imported objects into Pathfinder elements (see Generate Model from BIM). It is also supported as an export format for many architectural CAD packages, including Revit.

When exporting an IFC file from another CAD package, such as Revit, it is preferable to use the IFC 2x3 Coordination View, though other IFC views should work as well.

Each object imported from an IFC file corresponds with an IFC Entity instance. Currently, only instances with 3D geometry are imported. In addition, openings (holes) are pre-subtracted from objects, and the openings are not imported as objects. For example, a wall in the IFC file might be associated with an opening object for a window. When importing, Pathfinder will subtract the opening’s geometry from the wall geometry and only import the resulting wall. The window would additionally be imported as a separate object.

The Object Type for each object is set to the object’s IFC Entity type, such as IfcWall. The Import Type is chosen automatically based on the object’s Object Type and possibly other properties specified in the IFC file. For instance, an IFC object with entity type, IfcCovering has an associated PredefinedType property that specifies what kind of covering it is, such as a wall covering or floor covering. For floor coverings, Pathfinder will automatically set the object’s Import Type to Floor during import. Other types of coverings become Obstruction.

Table 5 specifies how the Import Type is chosen for imported IFC objects:

The IFC Entity Type includes derived entities unless specifically listed in the table. For instance, IfcElement includes IfcBeam, IfcColumn, etc., since those entities derive from IfcElement and are not listed in the table. IfcElement does not, however, include IfcDoor since IfcDoor is in the table. In addition, IfcDoor includes both IfcDoor and IfcDoorStandardCase since IfcDoorStandardCase is derived but not listed.

Importing DXF Files

DXF is a basic CAD format provided by Autodesk. This format supports basic geometry types, including 3D faces, lines, and text, but it does not support material information, such as textures, lighting parameters, etc.

Import Type for all DXF objects is Obstruction. In order for the Import Type to be more useful, it must be set manually. Some suggestions for doing so are given in Generate Model from BIM.

Importing DWG Files

The DWG format is similar to DXF, but it also has basic support for materials, including textures. It has only basic support for mapping textures onto objects, however, and few CAD applications can export DWG files. Some, such as Revit, exclude material and texture information (see more information in Importing Revit Files below).

Import Type for all DWG objects is Obstruction. In order for the Import Type to be more useful, it must be set manually. Some suggestions for doing so are given in Generate Model from BIM.

Importing FBX Files

FBX provides support for 3D faces only, but it has good support for material information and materials mapping. In addition, many 3D modeling applications have native support for exporting FBX files.

Import Type for all FBX objects is Obstruction. In order for the Import Type to be more useful, it must be set manually. Some suggestions for doing so are given in Generate Model from BIM.

Importing glTF Files

Pathfinder also supports importing glTF 2.0 files (and the GLB variant). Like FBX files, glTF is a 3D interchange format with good support for materials and material mapping and is most commonly used to specify 3D faces, though it has some limited support for lines. glTF files can also include skinning information, which makes it useful for importing custom avatars as well (see Importing Custom Avatars).

Unlike FBX files, glTF files have native support for physically-based materials (PBR), which can significantly improve the appearance of imported geometry, especially when combined with image-based lighting in Results. In addition, glTF is a newer format than FBX and is not natively supported for export by as many 3D modeling applications; however, external export plugins are available for many of these applications.

glTF files come in two flavors:

The following glTF extensions are also supported:

Import Type for all glTF objects is Obstruction. In order for the Import Type to be more useful, it must be set manually. Some suggestions for doing so are given in Generate Model from BIM.

Importing PyroSim and FDS Files

PyroSim and FDS files provide objects with 3D faces. If the imported file contains holes, the holes will be automatically subtracted from the solid obstructions and discarded. If the file contains grids, the grids will be intersected with each other as FDS would, and the remaining faces of the grids will be imported. If the file contains OPEN vents, the vents will be subtracted from the appropriate grid faces and discarded.

Import Type for all PyroSim and FDS objects is Obstruction. In order for the Import Type to be more useful, it must be set manually. Some suggestions for doing so are given in Generate Model from BIM.

Importing Revit Files

While Pathfinder cannot directly import Autodesk Revit files (RVT), there are several ways to export the data from Revit into a file format that Pathfinder can read. Each method has advantages and disadvantages as discussed below.

Importing Occupant CSV Files

See Importing from a CSV File for more information.

Generate Model from BIM

The easiest way to create a complete Pathfinder navigation mesh, including rooms, doors, and stairs, is to use the Generate Model from BIM action. This action works best with imported IFC files, but it can work with other CAD file types as well, as long as those files contain 3D face data, such as from DXF, DWG, FBX, and GLB/glTF files. These non-IFC file types require some extra steps as outlined below.

To use this action, perform the following steps:

If only a subset of the imported objects needs to be modeled in Pathfinder, either set the Import Type for unnecessary objects to <ignored> before generating the model with the above steps or perform the following instead:

Generate Settings

When using the Generate Model from BIM action, various settings can be specified in the Generate Settings dialog as shown in Figure 85.

The following settings are available in the Generate Settings dialog:

Max Slope

Determines the maximum slope of a floor to be considered as a walkable surface. A slope of 0° indicates a flat surface, while a slope of 90° is vertical.

Max head height

The maximum height for objects to be considered overhead obstructions. Overhead obstructions are used to cut out portions of the resulting rooms to prevent occupants from walking in that space. Imported objects higher than this will not be counted as obstructions.

Generate from tops of solids

If checked, walkable surfaces will only be generated from closed, solid objects if the surface is on the top of the solid (i.e. there are no other surfaces in the object above it). This helps reduce the number of surfaces that will be considered for generating rooms, which also reduces the computation time. The result should be the same, however, if this is checked or unchecked. If it seems like any rooms are missing from the result, try unchecking this option.

Exclude rooms in solids

If checked, rooms that were generated inside solid objects such as walls are excluded from the result. This helps reduce the number of resulting rooms. If any rooms appear to be missing from the result, try unchecking this option.

Close gaps smaller than x

If checked, thin boundary edges are inserted into a room anywhere where there are room boundaries close together. This is useful in combination with Exclude rooms with area less than x to reduce the complexity of the model.

Exclude rooms with area less than x

If checked, rooms with small area are excluded from the result. This is useful in combination with Close gaps smaller than x to reduce the complexity of the model and remove portions where an occupant would not walk, such as between a desk and wall.

Use imported names

If checked, the resulting navigation elements (rooms, doors, stairs) will be named after the imported object from which they derived. Otherwise, a generic name will be used.

Generate doors

If checked, adds Pathfinder doors to the navigation mesh from the imported doors.

Generate stairs

If checked, adds Pathfinder stairs to the navigation mesh from the imported stairs.

Max vertical step distance

The maximum allowed distance in the Z direction between steps of a stair. If an imported stair contains any consecutive steps further away than this, they will not be connected.

Max horizontal step distance

The maximum allowed distance in the XY direction between steps of a stair. If an imported stair contains any consecutive steps further away than this, they will not be connected.

Min stair width

The minimum width of resulting stairs. If an area that looks like a stair is narrower than this distance, it will not result in a stair.

The following settings will only impact the handling of objects exported by the Evac4Bim Plugin for Revit (https://github.com/YakNazim/Evac4Bim/releases):

Generate profiles

If checked, generates profiles based on properties of objects with Import Type Building.

Generate occupants

If checked, adds occupants to the model based on properties of objects with Import Type Room. If any profiles were generated, a uniform distribution of those profiles is used for the resulting occupants; otherwise, the existing Default profile is used. If the Default profile has been deleted, the first existing profile in the model is used. The resulting occupants will also be assigned to a new Behavior that has a single Goto Any Exit action (see The Goto Exits Action). If there are any objects with Import Type Building, the behavior’s Initial Delay is set to the distribution defined in the building.

Extract Rooms Individually

While automatic model generation should work for most 3D CAD files, it may not always produce the desired result, the user might want more control over the rooms that are generated, or it might just be too prohibitive to set the Import Type for some non-IFC CAD files.

Pathfinder provides an Extract Room tool that can address these issues. This tool allows rooms to be extracted individually using a flood-fill algorithm. While it may take more effort to extract all the necessary rooms, it does not require objects to have an Import Type specified unless an object is to be ignored.

To use the Extract Room tool:

Below is an example of a 3D CAD model Figure 87 and a room extracted from it Figure 88.

When using the extract room tool, Pathfinder will include all imported geometry with faces, even if hidden. If an object must be excluded from room extraction, the object’s Import Type must be set to <ignored> before performing extraction. Otherwise, this tool completely ignores the Import Type of the objects.

Working with 2D CAD

2D CAD data can be worked with in two ways:

To sketch the rooms using the built in drawing tools, refer to Rooms.

Extracting rooms from 2D CAD data works similarly to extracting rooms from 3D CAD data. As in 3D extraction, the Extract Room tool is used. In addition, the user must click a point in the model with the tool, and one room will be extracted.

The main difference from 3D extraction is that the clicked point must not lie on any 3D imported faces marked for room extraction; instead it must be in empty space (or on the background rectangle imported with a 2D floorplan). The clicked point should also be surrounded by imported 2D lines. These lines will form the boundary of the resulting room. For this reason, any lines that do not contribute to the room’s boundary, such as notations, symbols, etc. should be deleted, hidden, or excluded from room extraction prior to clicking the extraction point.

To manually exclude imported geometry from floor extraction, select the geometry and from the property panel, set the Import Type to <ignored>. When determining which imported geometry to extract rooms from, the 2D room extraction tool will automatically exclude hidden objects and those manually ignored.

Once the desired point is clicked, the surrounding 2D lines looking at the model from the Top View will be projected along the Z axis onto the active floor’s working Z plane. These projected lines will then be used to define the room around the clicked point. If the surrounding lines do not form a closed boundary as shown in Figure 89, the resulting room will spill outside of the lines and form a room around the bounding box of all the lines as shown in Figure 90. In this case, this outer portion of the room can be separated from the inner portion using the Thin Wall tool as discussed in Thin Walls. Once separated, the outer portion can be deleted.

When the extraction tool is finished finding a room, the room will lie in the working Z plane of the active floor.

Working with Images

Working with background images requires the user to draw all rooms, doors, and stairs over the background image (Figure 91). Because the drawn navigation geometry will cover the background image, it may be preferable to make the navigation geometry transparent. This can be accomplished by selecting the drawn navigation components and lowering the opacity in the property panel. Figure 92 shows a background image with rooms and doors drawn on top, with a lowered opacity for the drawn rooms.

To draw rooms on top of a background image, refer to Rooms.

Filling in Missing Pieces

Once rooms have been extracted using the Extract Room tool, the model will still be missing doors and stairs (Figure 93). Doors and stairs must be added manually as discussed in Doors and Stairs of this guide.

One feature that may be of particular interest to help this process, however, is the internal door feature of the door tool. This feature automatically finds areas within a room that look like potential doorways and can be used to create a thick door in this area.

To use this feature:

Flattening and Z Location

Sometimes when importing from 3D CAD models, extracted rooms may not be at the proper height or may have some undesired slope. These issues can be corrected either before or after extracting rooms by using the Set Z dialog (Figure 96).

To do so, follow these steps:

The dialog shows the following properties and options:

Materials

Materials define advanced display properties that can be applied to faces contained in the imported geometry. They are only shown when the Realistic or Realistic with Outlines option is selected in the 2D View or the 3D View, see View Options. Materials can be shared among faces; when a material is edited, all faces referencing that material are updated.

Materials are extracted from import files in different ways, depending on the file type:

To see the materials that have been imported from the DWG or PSM file, on the Model menu, select Manage Material Database. The Material Dialog will appear as shown in Figure 97.

Pathfinder provides some default database materials. Most of these materials start with the prefix, psm_ as in PyroSim. Other materials were either created manually by the user or were imported with the CAD or PyroSim file.

Materials can be added manually by clicking New under the material list. Materials can also be created from an initial texture image on disk by clicking Import. The image is copied into the database directory. Newly created materials are added to the database, and can be used across instances of Pathfinder.

Materials can be deleted by clicking Remove under the material list. If the material exists in the database, all its associated files in the database directory will also be permanently removed.

The following material properties can be edited from this dialog:

Advanced Material Properties

Additional material properties can be edited by pressing the Advanced Materials button. This will show the Advanced Materials Dialog for the currently selected material.

Most properties in this dialog can be specified as either a constant color/value or as a texture image. For those properties that represent a single value as opposed to a color, such as the Roughness value for PBR workflow, a dropdown next to the texture chooser can be used to pick which color component is the source of the values. This is useful when multiple properties are packed into a single image, but in different color components. For instance, say the PBR parameters, metallic, roughness, and ambient occlusion, are packed into the red, green, and blue color components of a single image. In this case, the same image can be chosen for the metallic, roughness, and ambient occlusion textures. The dropdowns next to each texture would be set to R, G, and B, respectively.

The following material properties can be edited from this dialog:

Depending on which workflow is selected, the following additional properties are provided:

Reorganizing and Making Fast Edits

Sometimes the imported data may not be organized in a convenient manner. For instance, it might be desirable to change some feature of all the windows, but the windows in the model may not be in the same group, making it difficult to select all of them at once.

In cases such as these, the similar objects may have the same color. If so, right click one of the objects, and choose Select All by Color. Alternatively, choose Select All by Material. This will find all objects with the same color or material and select them, making it easy to change some shared property or move them into another group for easy selection later.

Custom Avatar Requirements

The following file formats are supported for importing custom avatars, listed in order of preference with the most preferred first:

Avatar files should follow these rules if possible:

Occupant avatars have the following additional constraints:

Where to Find Custom Avatars

There are a variety of sources for custom avatars. They can either be purchased or downloaded online from third-party vendors specializing in 3D models or they can be created using third-party tools. Pathfinder has been successfully tested with avatars provided from the following sources:

Importing a Custom Occupant Avatar

To import a custom occupant avatar, perform the following steps:

Importing a Custom Vehicle Avatar

To import a custom vehicle shape avatar, perform the following:

Fixing Avatar Issues

After importing a custom avatar, it may need further adjustments in order to display correctly. The following is a list of recommendations for fixing avatar issues:

Avatar Performance Considerations

The avatars that ship with Pathfinder have been optimized for use in Pathfinder Results, allowing many thousands of occupants to be displayed onscreen at once with good performance. Custom avatars are not optimized for Pathfinder Results, as they contain no level-of-detail information and often contain much more detail than is necessary for displaying thousands of occupants. Using custom avatars will likely result in reduced results display performance compared to using avatars supplied by Pathfinder.

Currently the only ways to mitigate this problem are to either limit the number of occupants using the custom avatars or use custom avatars that are designed with low polygon counts and/or low-resolution textures.

Making Avatars Available to Other Pathfinder Users

When avatars are imported into Pathfinder, they are copied into the %APPDATA%/Pathfinder/models/ location, which limits their use to the current user on the current machine. If the results of a Pathfinder model containing these custom avatars are loaded by another user or on another machine, the occupants using the custom avatars will look like the Mannequin model that ships with Pathfinder. To make these custom avatars available to others users, perform the following from the computer and user account from which the avatars were imported:

Custom Animation Requirements

Typically, animations are designed in 3D modeling software for a specific avatar or are created from motion capture from an actor in a studio. The avatar/motion capture model is typically represented as a skeleton with a joint hierarchy. The animation data is simply transformations of the skeleton’s joints over time.

Animations can be stored in various file formats, such as FBX, usually exported from 3D modeling software. Depending on the file format, the animation file may be able to contain a single animation or multiple and may optionally include the avatar for which the animation was created. Repositories of animations can be found online, such as https://www.mixamo.com/.

While each animation is designed for a specific avatar, once it is imported into Pathfinder it can be used with any avatar. This happens through a process called retargeting, where Pathfinder will analyze the animation along with some information about the originating avatar, and then adjust the animation to better match the target avatar, even if the target has vastly different limb proportions or features than the original.

In order for this retargeting process to work well, animation files should follow the these rules if possible:

Where to Find Custom Animations

There are a variety of sources for custom animations. They can either be purchased or downloaded online from third-party vendors specializing in 3D animations or they can be created using third-party tools. Pathfinder has been successfully tested with animations from the following sources:

Importing a Custom Animation

To import a custom animation into Pathfinder, perform the following steps:

In the Animation Datatabase Dialog animations can be imported, renamed, and deleted. By default, the list on the left shows all imported animations; however, the field above the list can be used to filter the list by tag. For instance, enter upright and press ENTER to see all animations containing the upright tag. Add additional tags to further refine the search.

The following properties can be entered in the Import Animation Dialog and the Animation Database Dialog:

Move Animations

Move animations are used when an occupant is actively moving toward a destination. They are defined slightly different than Idle animations, as they also have associated speed and direction.

Each move animation represents the occupant moving in a single direction, relative to the occupant’s orientation. Only a single direction needs to be specified for a given set of tags, but more can be defined to improve realism in Results. When a direction is defined, the same animation (but reversed) will be used for the opposite direction if the opposite direction isn’t explicitly defined. For instance, if Forward is defined, but Backward is not, the reverse of the Forward animation will be used for Backward. For all other missing directions, the direction is filled in by the nearest non-missing direction. For instance, if Left is not defined, but Forward,Left is, then Forward,Left will also be used for Left. When an avatar is matching an animation clip to their current relative movement direction, they will choose the clip closest to their direction.

While only one direction needs to be defined, it’s recommended that at least the following be defined (all with the same set of tags) to provide acceptable animation in Results:

Forward

Use an animation where the occupant is moving directly forward.

Forward,Up

Use an animation where the occupant is moving up stairs.

Forward,Down

Use an animation where the occupant is moving down stairs.

Each move animation can be defined as a set of animation clips, each clip defining a different speed range for the move animation’s direction. For instance, you might specify a walking animation clip for speeds ranging from 0 to 1.8 m/s and a running animation clip for speeds > 1.8 m/s. Each animation clip is represented as a single row of the Clips table as shown in Figure 105, and its speed range spans from the previous clip’s Top Speed to the current clip’s Top Speed. Clips must be listed in order of increasing Top Speed. The Top Speed for the last clip can be left blank. When an occupant chooses a move animation clip in Results, they will choose the one whose range spans the occupant’s current speed.

The following additional properties can be defined for move animations and their animation clips:

Direction

Defines the direction of movement for the animation, relative to the direction the occupant is facing. Directions can be combined if desired. For instance, if the animation represents an occupant walking diagonally forward and to the right of the direction they’re facing, select the directions, Forward and Right.

Start Frame

Remaps the specified frame as the first frame of the animation. For walking/running animations, this should be the frame at which the avatar’s legs are together and the left foot is about to step forward.

Natural Speed

The approximate speed that an avatar would be moving if they played the animation at 1x speed. For instance, the Natural Speed of a walking animation clip representing a single walk cycle might be calculated as 2*foot_stride/clip_time, where foot_stride is the distance between the avatar’s heels at full stride, and clip_time is the total clip time. When playing the animation clip in Results for a particular occupant, the playback speed of the clip is adjusted automatically according to the Natural Speed of the animation and the movement speed of the occupant. For instance, if the Natural Speed is 1.1 m/s, but the occupant is moving at 1.32 m/s, the animation will play at 1.2x speed (1.32/1.1).

Top Speed

Defines the upper speed range for the clip. An occupant will use this clip if their speed is between the Top Speeds of the previous and current clips.

Making Animations Available to Other Pathfinder Users

When animations are imported into Pathfinder, they are copied into %APPDATA%/Pathfinder/models/anims, which limits their use to the current user on the current machine. If the results of a Pathfinder model using these custom animations are loaded by another user or on another machine, Results may fail to match the animation tags, causing it to display the avatars in their T- or A-poses instead. To make these custom animations available to others users, perform the following from the computer and user account from which the animations were imported:

Characteristics Tab

Movement Tab

The Movement tab provides parameters related to how occupants use their surroundings.

Restrictions Tab

The Restrictions tab specifies which components the occupant can use during path planning. For each component type, the following options are available:

Door Choice Tab

The Door Choice tab provides parameters related to how occupants choose doors to exit from in each room. For more information about door choice see the (Pathfinder Technical Reference, n.d.).

Animation Tab

The Animation tab provides parameters that control the animations used by occupants in the 3D Results when occupants are viewed as people. Pathfinder provides several basic animations, including walking and idling, but allows custom animations to be imported as well (see Importing Custom Animations).

The animation used by an occupant depends on their current movement state. If they are idling (not actively moving toward a destination), they will use one of the Idle Animations. Otherwise, they will use one of the Move Animations.

An occupant’s animation can be overridden by a vehicle if they are using a vehicle shape (see Vehicle Shapes).

In order to define an occupant’s animations, Pathfinder uses a tagging system. Each animation is associated with one or more tags (see Importing a Custom Animation). When specifying which animations to use in the occupant profile, either a pre-defined animation can be selected or a custom animation can be matched with any combination of the animation’s tags. For instance, if a custom animation AnimA has the tags upright and alert and AnimB has the tags upright and bored, specifying an Idle Animation of upright will match with both AnimA and AnimB. However, specifing an Idle Animation of upright bored will only match AnimB. Enter fewer tags to match generically or more tags to match more specifically; however, be careful not to enter a combination of tags that cannot be matched by any animation.

To edit the animations, click the underlined text next to Idle Animations or Move Animations. The Animation Tags dialog will appear.

The following options are available depending on the animation type:

Output Tab

The Output tab provides the Output Detailed Data option. When checked, additional output data files are generated for each occupant using this profile. The files contain data for each time step, such as occupant speed, location, etc. (see Occupant History).

Advanced Tab

The Advanced tab provides the following parameters:

Each of these parameters (except on/off parameters) can be set using a constant value, a uniform distribution between two values, or either a normal (Gaussian) or log-normal distribution (see Stochastic Parameters).

Each occupant in the Pathfinder model is linked to one profile. Profile parameters can be edited in the profiles dialog at any time and the occupants using that profile will be automatically updated. Occupants' profiles can be set when adding the occupants or by selecting the occupants after being created and editing the Profile box in the property panel.

Advanced Speed Properties

In most cases, users only need to enter the maximum speed of an occupant in the Characteristics tab of the Edit Profiles dialog. The actual speed of the occupant throughout a simulation will vary according to this speed and a set of assumptions from the Engineering Guide to Human Behavior in Fire (SFPE 2019), which takes into account the type of terrain being traversed (stairs, ramps, etc.) and the density of surrounding occupants (see (Pathfinder Technical Reference, n.d.)).

Pathfinder allows for fine-grained control over the speed of the occupant, however, and the SFPE assumptions can be customized or replaced with other assumptions.

To do so, follow these steps:

1. In the Model menu, click Edit Profiles to open the Edit Profiles dialog.
2. Click the Characteristics tab.
3. Next to Speed, click the drop-down box and select Advanced as shown in Figure 111.

This will open the Advanced Speed Properties dialog as shown in Figure 112.

As noted in the Advanced Speed Properties dialog, when simulating in SFPE mode, only the maximum speed property is used. All others in the Advanced Speed Properties dialog are ignored.

Clicking Reset to Defaults in the Advanced Speed Properties dialog will reset all advanced speed properties to their default values in Pathfinder.

Each tab in the dialog allows the customization of occupant speed on each terrain type in Pathfinder, including Level Terrain, Stairs, and Ramps.

Level Terrain Tab

The Speed Density Profile can be used to set the occupant’s speed as a function of the surrounding occupant density, also known as the fundamental diagram. One of three options may be chosen for the profile:

SFPE

The fundamental diagram as specified in the Engineering Guide to Human Behavior in Fire (SFPE, 2003) is used to adjust occupant speed.

Constant

The maximum speed is multiplied by a constant factor to determine the occupant’s speed. In most cases, the occupant will either try to move this speed or stop.

From Table

The speed is entered as a fraction of the occupant’s maximum speed as a function of surrounding occupant density. The values are entered in the Speed-Density Profile dialog as shown in Figure 113. The profile is defined as a piece-wise linear function, where sample points are entered into a table. For densities within the entered range, the speed fraction is interpolated. For densities outside the range, the speed fraction is equal to that entered for the nearest specified density. A preview of the fundamental diagram is shown to the right of the table. The SFPE profile, which is the default profile, may be loaded by clicking Load SFPE profile below the table.

Stairs Tab

The following properties may be entered in the Stairs tab:

Speed Fraction Up

Defines a speed factor when the occupant travels up stairs.

Speed-Density Up

Defines the speed-density profile to use when the occupant travels up stairs.

Speed Fraction Down

This specifies the speed fraction when the occupant travels down stairs.

Speed-Density Down

This specifies the speed-density profile to use when the occupant travels down stairs.

The above parameters define a factor that is multiplied by occupant’s maximum speed to determine their speed up or down stairs.

The factor may be specified in one of three ways:

SFPE

The assumptions from the SFPE Engineering Guide to Human Behavior in Fire are used to determine the speed fraction up stairs. This option uses the rise and run of the stair to determine the speed.

Constant

A constant factor is applied to the maximum speed.

From Table

The speed factor can be entered as a function of stair slope. Stair slope is defined as step rise/step run. The function is entered as a piece-wise linear function.

Additionally, the Speed-Density Up and Speed-Density Down parameters have the From Level Terrain option. This option forces the occupant to use the same speed-density profile as specified on the Level Terrain tab when the occupant travels up or down stairs.

Ramps Tab

The Ramps tab has nearly identical properties available as on the Stairs tab. The only difference is that Speed Fraction Up and Speed Fraction Down are entered in terms of the ramp’s geometric slope rather than step slope. The geometric slope is determined per triangle in the resulting navigation mesh and depends on the triangle’s normal direction.

Stochastic Parameters

Many parameters, including speed, can be specified by a constant value or in terms of a probability distribution.

Pathfinder supplies inputs for the following distributions:

Seeds

Each occupant has a unique random seed that determines the specific values generated from a profile distribution. Each of these occupant-specific values can be seen by selecting an individual occupant. These specific values will never change unless the distribution is changed in the profile or a new seed is manually generated for the occupant. This ensures that two simulation runs with the same input model will give the same answer. New seeds can be generated for occupants by right-clicking the occupants and selecting Randomize.

For an example of the effects of the changing the seed or profile, consider the following scenario:

Customizing Occupants

When occupants are selected, their property panel appears as shown in Figure 114. Occupants can be given custom profile data once they are added to the model. This can be done by selecting a set of occupants and checking the box next to the parameter to be customized.

Percentage-based distributions can also be used to assign occupant profiles and behaviors to a group of occupants, see Redistributing Profiles and Behaviors.

Customized properties will be overwritten if an occupant switches their profile or changes a property during simulation, see The Change Profile Action and The Change Profile Property Action.

When using custom profile data, only constant values can be used for occupant parameters. In addition, once a parameter is customized, any changes to that parameter in the profile will not affect the customized value.

Occupants with individually customized parameters can easily be found by right-clicking all or a sub-set of occupants and selecting Select Customized Occupants from the right-click menu if any exist in the selection.

Profile Libraries

Profiles can be saved and reused using profile libraries (Figure 115). Profile libraries are managed in the Profile Libraries dialog. To open the Profile Libraries dialog, on the Edit Profiles dialog, click Add From Library Alternatively, the Profile Libraries dialog can also be opened by clicking Edit Profile Libraries on the Model menu.

The list on the left side of the dialog shows all profiles contained in the current Pathfinder model. The list on the right side of the dialog shows all profiles stored in the profile library. Profiles can be moved between the lists using the buttons in the middle of the dialog. Create New Library clears the list of library profiles so that a new library can be created. Load Library opens a profile library from file. Pathfinder supports loading profiles from profile library files (PLIB) and from standard Pathfinder model files (PTH).

To create a Pathfinder library file (PLIB) based on profiles in the current model:

The dropdown menu on the right side of the dialog can be used to load predefined libraries. To fill the predefined libraries box, Pathfinder scans two locations: a folder in the Pathfinder installation shared by all users and a folder in the current user’s APPDATA path, see Table 10.

All predefined profile libraries are opened as read-only to prevent accidental modification. To modify a library, you will need to resave to overwrite the existing PLIB file. See Appendix A, for more information on the occupant profiles provided with Pathfinder.

Creating a New Behavior

To create a new behavior:

With the new behavior selected, the behavior property panel will appear as shown in Figure 118.

Adding Actions

Additional actions can be added to any behavior, such as going to a room, a waypoint, an elevator, or simply waiting in place. To add an action, select a behavior or existing behavior action. The property panel (Figure 119) will show a drop-down button with the description of an action that can be added. To add the currently shown action, simply click the button. To add a different action, click the down-arrow shown to the right of the button and select the desired action from the behavior actions list.

Once the desired action is clicked, a creation panel will be shown above the 3D/2D View depending on the action. Enter the desired parameters in the creation panel as discussed in the following sections, and then click Create to create the action and append it to the behavior. If the behavior itself was selected when adding the action, then the new action will be appended to the end of the list. If, instead, an action was selected when the new action was created, then the new action is inserted directly after that selected action. If the action is an ending action (includes all actions below the separator in the behavior actions list), the action will always be added at the end. If the behavior already has an ending action, it will replace the existing ending action.

Actions always occur in the order shown in the Navigation View. For instance, as shown in Figure 120, an occupant using "Behavior1" would first go to any elevator, then go to "Room00", then wait for 20 seconds, then go to "Room09". After reaching "Room09", the occupant will be removed from the simulation. The actions can be reordered at any time by dragging and dropping an action in the list in the Navigation View.

Behavior Action Types

The Goto Occupant Action

A Goto Occupant Action tells an occupant to select another occupant and seek to them.

1. Click the Goto Occupant item from the behavior actions list.
2. Enter the desired parameters in the Goto Occupant dialog as described below and shown in Figure 121.
3. Click Create.

A source occupant uses the following parameters to determine which destination occupant to select and how to seek to them:

Tags

The set of tags to require the destination occupant to have (see Occupant Tags).

All

Requires the destination occupant to have all tags in the set.

Any

Requires the destination occupant to have at least one tag in the set.

Distance Preference

Defines how the occupant will take their travel distance to each occupant into account when choosing a destination occupant.

None

The occupant does not care about their distance to the occupant. The destination occupant is chosen randomly from those available.

Nearest

The nearest available occupant is chosen.

Tracking

Defines how the source occupant will track the destination occupant.

Go to occupant

The source occupant seeks the destination occupant until they are within the Arrival Radius and have a clear line-of-sight.

Follow occupant

The source occupant seeks and follows the destination occupant as long as the destination occupant is still in the simulation and has the desired tags.

Go to initial location

The source occupant records the location of the destination occupant when the action is started and then seeks that point until they are within the Arrival Radius and have a clear line-of-sight to the point. The destination occupant may not still be at the point when the source occupant arrives.

Arrival Radius

The radius within which the source occupant is considered to have arrived at the destination occupant.

No available occupants

Defines what to do if there are no reachable occupants matching the Tag criteria when the action is started.

Skip action

The source occupant will skip this action.

Wait

The source occupant will wait until a destination occupant can be found.

Destination unreachable

Defines how the occupant will behave if the destination occupant becomes unreachable.

Skip action

The source occupant will skip this action.

Wait

The source occupant will wait until the destination occupant becomes reachable again.

Restart action

The action is restarted so a new destination occupant can be selected.

The Wait Until Action

A Wait Until action instructs an occupant to delay their movement until a specified simulation time passes. This action is useful for synchronizing movement of many occupants at a time. Occupants fill space during a Wait Until action per the same rules described for the Wait action. Wait Until actions can be specified using three different approaches: occupants can wait until a specific time, the next in a list of times, or the next time in a periodic function.

To add a Wait Until action:

1. Click Wait Until from the behavior actions list.
2. Click the time to edit the value, which will show the Wait Until Time dialog as shown in Figure 122.
3. Choose a sub-action from the drop-down.
4. Specify the required parameters.
5. Click OK on the Wait Until Time dialog.
6. Click Create.

Within the Wait Until Time dialog, there are three sub-actions available:

Wait until a specific time

This action tells occupants to wait in their current location until the simulation time passes the specified time. If the time has already passed when the occupant begins this action, they will immediately proceed to their next action.

Wait until next scheduled time

This action allows the user to specify a list of wait times. When an occupant begins the wait action, they compare the simulation time to the list of specified times, and wait until the first time greater than the simulation time. If the simulation time is greater than any specified time, the occupant immediately proceeds to the next action.

Wait until next periodic time

This action sets up a periodic list of times.

Time offset

Specifies the first entry in the time list.

Time interval

Specifies the delay between times in the list.

The list of times is then generated from these parameters. For example, if Time offset is set to 60 s, and the Time interval is set to 10 s, the list of times will be [60, 70, 80, 90, 100, …​]. Similarly to the Wait until next scheduled time action, when the occupant begins this action, they will pick the next time in the list and wait until that time passes.

Both the Time offset and Time interval may be specified as distributions. In this case, each occupant will be given a unique list of times to choose from. For instance, if the Time offset is set to a uniform distribution of [50,60] and the Time interval is set to be constant at 10 s, one occupant may get the list, [52.3, 62.3, 72.3, 82.3, …​], and another occupant may get the list [59.2, 69.2, 79.2, 89.2, …​].

The Look At Action

This action causes an occupant to orient their body toward another occupant and continue doing so while performing their next behavior actions until they encounter a Look Ahead action. While the occupant has a look-at target, they will orient their body as long as they have a clear line-of-sight to the destination occupant’s center, according to the navigation mesh. If they do not have clear line-of-sight, they will orient their body toward their goal instead.

1. Click the Look At item from the behavior actions list.
2. Enter the desired parameters in the Look-at dialog as described below and shown in Figure 123.
3. Click Create.

A source occupant uses the following parameters to determine which destination occupant to select:

Tags

The set of tags to require the destination occupant to have (see Occupant Tags).

All

Requires the destination occupant to have all tags in the set.

Any

Requires the destination occupant to have at least one tag in the set.

Distance Preference

Defines how the occupant will take their travel distance to each occupant into account when choosing a destination occupant.

None

The occupant does not care about their distance to the destination occupant. The destination occupant is chosen randomly from those visible.

Nearest

The nearest visible occupant is chosen.

Individual Placement

Individual occupants can be added to the model with the Add Occupant tool . Occupants can only be placed in pre-existing rooms, stairs, and ramps and cannot overlap other occupants or room boundaries. Left-click a desired position with the mouse, or enter an x-y-z coordinate and press the Create button from the property panel to place an occupant (Figure 124).

Group Placement

Groups of occupants can be added to the model with the Add Occupants to a Region tool . The occupants are distributed throughout the region using parameters in the property panel as shown in Figure 127.

Once the properties have been specified, there are two ways to draw the placement region:

When finished with the tool, the occupants will be placed within the designated region (Figure 126).

When an occupant is selected, the property panel allows the occupant’s name, profile, and behavior to be edited. All profile parameters are also displayed, showing exactly what value will be used for that specific occupant. Any of these parameters can be overridden by checking the box next it and entering the desired value (see Customizing Occupants).

Room Placement

In addition to distributing occupants in placement regions, occupants can be distributed throughout entire rooms.

To do this:

Creating from Occupant Targets

Occupants can also be created from existing Occupant Targets (see Occupant Targets). To do so, perform the following:

Occupants will then be generated based on the selected distribution of profiles and behaviors:

Importing from a CSV File

Occupants can also be created by importing their locations from a CSV file. In the CSV file, each row represents a single occupant. The file must contain three columns, specifying the X, Y, and Z coordinates in meters for each occupant location.

An optional occupant name can be specified in the fourth column. If a name is not specified in the occupant’s row then a name will be generated for them.

To import the occupants, perform the following:

Occupant Sources

Occupant sources define areas in which occupants are generated dynamically throughout the simulation.

To add an occupant source, use the Add Occupant Source tool or right click on a door or a room in the model, and select Add Occupant Source. If an occupant source that is attached to a component is later deleted from the model the user will be notified and the occupant source will either be attached to a different component or deleted.

There are three options for specifying the physical location of the occupant source within the model, as shown in Figure 130.

An occupant source can be defined by a rectangular region or attached to a component in the model.

Once the location of an occupant sources is defined, additional parameters that relate to the occupants that are generated can be specified. Figure 131 below shows parameters that can be specified for an existing occupant source.

Flow Rate

The occupant source Flow Rate is the rate at which new occupants will be created. There are a number of methods for specifying the flow rate as discussed below.

Constant

Specifies the flow rate as a constant value in persons / second. The occupant source will continue flowing until the simulation end time (Time Parameters).

From Table

Specifies the flow rate as a function from a table, where the flow rate can vary over time. The flow rate table editor is shown in Figure 133 below. During the simulation, at any given time, the number of occupants that are released from the occupant source is calculated based on the integral of the resulting function up to that time, minus the number of occupants who have already been released.

The editor can also be used to automatically construct a periodical step function. To do so, click the Step Function button. The Create Step Function dialog is shown in Figure 132 below. The editor with a generated step function is shown in Figure 133 below.

The following are the parameters of the step function that can be set in the Create Step Function dialog:

Flow Rate

Flow rate value when occupant generation is ON.

Initial Delay

The amount of time at the beginning of the simulation until the step function begins.

On Duration

Amount of time in each period for which occupant generation is turned ON.

Off Duration

Amount of time in each period for which occupant generation is turned OFF.

Number of Cycles

The number of ON/OFF pairs in which occupants are generated. After this, the occupant source will stop generating occupants.

By Time

This option allows the specific occupant entry times to be specified in a table. This may be useful in re-creating observed data. The number of non-empty entries in the table determines the number of occupants who will be generated from the occupant source.

Scheduled

With the Scheduled flow rate option, the insertion times can be specified using timing intervals. Unlike the From Table option, the Scheduled option allows for random insertion times and instantaneous transitions between varying flow rates.

Each row of the table represents one insertion interval. The Time column indicates the start of that insertion interval. The Duration column indicates how long that insertion interval will last. The end time of the interval is Time + Duration. Intervals may not overlap. The Num. Occupants column indicates how many occupants will be released during that interval. The approximate flow rate for the interval is Num. Occupants / Duration.

The Timing Distribution indicates how the occupant insertion times will be distributed during each interval. The following options are available:

Uniform

Occupants are distributed at uniformly-timed intervals during each insertion interval. The total number of occupants is guaranteed as long as the flow rate is enforced and a valid location can be found on the occupant source.

Poisson

Occupants are inserted at random times during each insertion interval using a Poisson distribution. The total number of occupants is not guaranteed, though the number should be close to the approximation as long as the flow rate for each interval is sufficiently high enough, the flow rate is enforced, and a valid location can be found on the occupant source.

Random

Occupants are inserted at random times during each insertion interval using an approximately uniform distribution. Longer intervals produce more randomness, but the total number of occupants is guaranteed as long as the flowrate is enforced and a valid location can be found on the occupant source.

As with the From Table option, the Scheduled option can be used to create a step function with the Step Function button.

Assistants

Initially, the occupant becomes an assistant of a team based on their Assist Occupants action (The Assist Occupants Action).

Clients

When the simulation begins, the occupant becomes a client of a team or set of teams based on the client’s Wait for Assistance action (The Wait For Assistance Action) and then the client waits indefinitely for an assistant from one of those teams to offer assistance. When the client receives an offer, they choose the closest assistants to assign to all open positions on their vehicle (any extra offers are rejected).

All subsequent behaviors are processed with assistants attached until one of the following happens (depending on the terminating action):

Individual Placement

To create an Occupant Target using the Occupant Target tool, perform the following steps:

Creating Multiple Occupant Targets

There are currently no tools to directly add multiple Occupant Targets to the model, but targets can be created from existing occupants. This indirectly allows existing occupant placement tools to also be used to create Occupant Targets.

To create multiple targets in this manner, perform the following:

A dialog will appear asking whether to delete the selected occupants. Choosing Yes will delete them, effectively converting them into Occupant Targets. Choosing No will leave the selected occupants as-is, creating Occupant Targets at their locations.

The resulting Occupant Targets' orientations will match the initial orientations of the selected occupants.

Visualizing Occupant Target priorities

Occupant Target priorities can optionally be visualized using a colormap. To do so, on the View menu, select Color Occupant Targets→By Priority. The images below demonstrate coloring by priority with two different priority distributions. Dark red targets are high priority, and dark blue are low priority.

Choosing an Occupant Target

When choosing which Occupant Targets to request, an occupant will proceed as follows:

When picking from a set of targets, the occupant will use the preferences to further reduce the target set as follows:

Ensuring Timely Resolves

In some models there may be many conflicting reservation requests. For instance, suppose a model is seeded with thousands of occupants who want to go to Occupant Targets. Also suppose there are thousands of Occupant Targets, each with a different priority (see Prioritizing Occupant Targets) and that the occupants all desire the targets with highest priority. In this case, all occupants will immediately request the highest priority target. The reservation system can only pick one winner, while all others have to choose another target. In the next timestep, the occupants who did not win will choose the next highest priority target, repeating until all occupants have a reservation or until there are no more targets left.

If occupants were only allowed to request one target in each timestep, it could take thousands of timesteps to resolve the conflicts. To alleviate this problem, if an occupant sees that there were conflicts in the previous timestep for one of their requested targets, they may make several requests in the current timestep. The number of requests they choose in each time step depends on the number of conflicts in the previous timestep as well as the Occupant Target Resolve Time simulation parameter, as discussed in Miscellaneous Parameters. Using this parameter, occupants are guaranteed to reserve all available occupant targets within this time limit plus two additional timesteps from the time they start reserving targets.

For instance, suppose Occupant Target Resolve Time is set to the default time of 5 s. If the occupants start a Goto Occupant Targets action at t=0, either all targets should be reserved or all occupants should have a reservation by t=5.05 s, using the default timestep of .025 s.

Placing Triggers Manaually

Placing triggers manually can be helpful for creating global alarms or stationary distractions, such as signs. To add a trigger in this way, perform the following steps:

In the Navigation View, the created triggers can be found under the Triggers→Placed Triggers group.

Creating Triggers at Run-time from Trigger Templates

In order for a trigger to be created during the simulation, a Trigger Template will first need to be defined prior to running the simulation. Then, an occupant can create a Trigger Instance from a Trigger Template as part of their behavior with the Create Trigger action. Trigger templates share the same Trigger Properties as placed triggers except for location. They do not influence occupant behavior until created by a behavior action.

To create a trigger template, perform the following steps:

In the Navigation View, trigger templates are found under the Triggers→Trigger Templates group.

Converting Placed Triggers into Trigger Templates

Trigger Templates can also be created using the properties of an existing placed trigger.

To copy a placed trigger’s properties into a trigger template, perform the following steps:

A new trigger template will be created based on each trigger selected. After creation, these templates are disconnected from the original triggers and the properties of both can be edited seperately.

Wait at Trigger Behavior

To use the built-in behavior that waits at the trigger, perform the following:

Custom Trigger Behavior

To define a custom behavior for the trigger, create the behavior as defined in Behaviors and select it as the trigger’s Behavior.

Because a trigger can only define one behavior, all occupants who choose to use the trigger will use the same behavior. If you need the occupants to use different behaviors, however, you can do one of the following:

Interrupted Waiting

The Wait and Wait Until actions operate in a specific way when interrupted by a temporary trigger. When either of these actions is started by an occupant, an ending time is calculated and never changes, even if interrupted. For instance, if an occupant starts a Wait action at t=63 s, and they decide to wait for 30 s, the calculated end time is t=93 s. If the occupant is interrupted by a temporary trigger while waiting, they will complete the trigger behavior and then resume the wait action. When they resume the wait action, however, the end wait time remains unchanged at t=93 s. If the current time is already past t=93 s, the occupant will immediately begin their next behavior action. Otherwise, they will wait until t=93 s before beginning the next action as usual.

In addition, whenever an occupant is interrupted by a temporary trigger while waiting, the occupant will return to their previous waiting area when they resume the wait action. For instance, if an occupant is directed to go to a room using a Goto Rooms action and then told to wait for some time, their waiting area will be the entire room they reached before waiting. If they are then interrupted by a temporary trigger while waiting, they will return to the waiting room when done with the trigger behavior. Similarly, if they had gone to a waypoint instead, they would return to the waypoint. When the occupant resumes the wait action, the time it takes to get back to the waiting area counts against the wait time. So if the wait time elapses while they are on their way back to the waiting area, the occupant will stop travelling to the wait area and begin their next behavior action.

Trigger Filtering

Before an occupant can become aware of a trigger, they must first recognize that the trigger exists. This is controlled in two ways:

In order for an occupant to consider an trigger, both of the above properties must hold. A trigger must be in the Allowed Triggers for the occupant, and the occupant must pass the trigger’s Allowed Occupants test.

Trigger Awareness

For each trigger that passes the trigger filtering test as outlined above, the occupant must become aware of the trigger before they will decide to use it. This is determined by both the trigger’s Awareness and Awareness Requirements properties. There are several awareness tests and requirements that can be applied to a trigger as outlined in Trigger Properties.

Trigger Decision Scheduling

Once the occupant becomes aware of a trigger, they will schedule a time at which they will decide whether to use the trigger. The trigger’s Decision Time property defines when the occupant will make a decision. The decision time can be a delay after the occupant becomes aware, can be scheduled at a specific time, or can be calculated automatically (see Trigger Properties).

If a trigger’s Decision Time is set to Automatic, the time is calculated based on the occupant’s current movement state.

Trigger Decision

Once the Decision Time has elapsed, the occupant will decide whether to use the trigger. If they are still within the Awareness region or the trigger’s Remain aware property is checked, the occupant will calculate a probability of using the trigger (they will ignore the trigger, otherwise).

A probability of 0% means that the occupant is guaranteed to not use the trigger, whereas a probability of 100% or greater means that the occupant is guaranteed to use the trigger. Values between are used as follows:

The effect of this can be thought of in two ways:

Customizing Properties in the Property Panel

Most objects in Pathfinder have properties which can be customized in scenarios.

To customize properties of selected objects in the Property Panel,

Customizing Properties in Managers and other Dialogs

Properties that are edited in dialogs, such as profile properties and global simulation parameters, can also be customized by scenarios.

To customize properties in a dialog,

Moving

To move one or more objects, select the objects and click the move tool from the 2D or 3D view. The property panel for the move tool is shown in Figure 150.

The object can be moved either manually or graphically:

Objects can also be copied using the move tool. To do so, select the move tool, select Copy Mode from the property panel, and follow the same steps as above for moving an object. Alternatively, hold CTRL on the keyboard while defining the offset. This will create a copy of the object that has been offset by the move distance.

Similarly, an array of objects can be made by specifying a value greater than 1 for the Copies field in the property panel. The array is created by offsetting each previous copy by the move distance. If, when copying rooms, the resulting copies overlap one another the most recent copies take precedence over earlier ones, meaning that earlier ones will have area subtracted from them.

Rotating

To rotate one or more objects, select the objects and click the rotate tool from the 2D or 3D view. The property panel for the rotate tool is shown in Figure 153.

The object can be rotated either manually or graphically:

Objects can also be copied using the rotate tool.

This will create a copy of the object that has been rotated from the original using the rotate parameters. Similarly, an array of objects can be made by specifying a value greater than 1 for the Copies field in the property panel. The array is created by rotating each previous copy by the rotate angle.

If copying rooms and resulting copies overlap one another the most recent copies take precedence over earlier ones, meaning that earlier ones will have area subtracted from them. An array is shown in Figure 158.

Creating an array of objects using the rotate tool

Mirroring

To mirror one or more objects about a plane, select the objects and click the mirror tool from the 2D or 3D view. The property panel for the mirror tool is shown in Figure 159.

The object can be mirrored either manually or graphically:

Mirroring an object

Objects can also be copied using the mirror tool. To do so, select the mirror tool, select Copy Mode from the property panel, and follow the same steps as above for mirroring an object. Alternatively, hold CTRL on the keyboard while defining the mirror plane. This will create a copy of the object that has been mirrored from the original using the mirror plane.

Selecting and Deselecting a Handle

To select an object’s handle, the object itself must first be selected. Once it is selected, the blue handles should appear. Next select the Select/Edit tool . Now an individual handle can be selected by clicking it, which will make the handle property panel appear as shown in Figure 163. To deselect the handle, press ESC on the keyboard, click anywhere else in the model, or select another object.

Editing a Handle

A handle can be edited in one of two ways: it can be edited with the keyboard to enter precise values or it can be edited graphically.

Room Handles

When rooms are selected, a handle can be found at every vertex on the boundary of the room. The handles move the underlying vertex to reshape the room. The handles can be moved to any location within the plane of the face the vertex is on. If the vertex is shared between two faces in non-parallel planes, the handle can only be moved along the edge to which it is attached.

Thin Door Handles

When a thin door is selected, three handles will be displayed as shown in Figure 164. The handles on the ends of the door allow the door to be moved along the edge to which it is attached. The middle handle allows the door to be made thick by moving the handle to the edge of another room as shown in Figure 165.

Thick Door Handles

When a thick door is selected, six handles will be displayed as shown in Figure 165. The four handles on the corners of the door allow the door to be moved along the edge to which each handle is attached. Each middle handle allows the door to be made into a thin door by dragging to the other middle handle. The middle handle can also be useful to reattach the door to a room if the door somehow became detached (such as by a modification to the room).

Stair and Ramp Handles

When a stair or ramp is selected, six handles will be displayed as shown in Figure 166. The four corner handles each allow the stair/ramp to be moved along the edge to which the handle is attached. The middle handles allow the stair/ramp to be reconnected to another room. The middle handles can also be useful if the geometry of one room attached to a stair/ramp has changed in such a way that the stair/ramp is no longer attached to the room. The middle handle can be used in this case to reconnect to the room.

Occupant handle

When an occupant is selected, there is only one handle as shown in Figure 167. The sole purpose of this handle is to move the agent to another location. Moving an agent in this manner has a benefit over the translation tool in that the location automatically snaps to an existing room or stair as when adding an agent using the occupant dropper tool.

Waypoint Handles

When a waypoint is selected, two handles are displayed as shown in Figure 168. The center handle allows the waypoint to be moved to another location similarly to the occupant handle. The perimeter of the circle can be used as a handle to change the arrival radius of the waypoint.

Occupant Target Handles

When an Occupant Target is selected, two handles are displayed in Figure 169. The center handle allows the target to be moved to another location. The line handle extending from the center can be used to change the orientation of the target. The orientation defines the direction the occupant will face when waiting at the target.

Editing Tags

Tags are assigned in the property panel. A Tag will be created for each unique character string separated by spaces or other delimiter characters.

Finding Objects with a Shared Tag

One of the main purposes of Tags is to quickly find and identify related objects. Pathfinder provides several ways to quickly find tagged objects.

Show Tagged Objects

Selected Tags

Displays the currently selected tags that will be used for the search.

Tagged Objects

Indicates how the tagged objects are chosen. The following options are available:

Objects must have at least 1 of the selected tags

This option is available when more than one tag is selected. It indicates that the chosen objects must have at least one of the selected tags. For instance, if the selection contains tags, tag1 and tag2, the chosen objects will have either tag1 or tag2 or both tag1 and tag2.

Objects must have all of the selected tags

This option is available when more than one tag is selected. It indicates that the chosen objects must have all of the selected tags. For instance, if the selection contains tags, tag1 and tag2, the chosen objects will have both of the tags.

Exclude objects with other tags

Excludes objects if they have tags that are not in the selection. For instance, if the selection contains tags, tag1 and tag2, and an object contains these tags but also contains tag3, it will be excluded from the result. This may be useful, for instance, to find objects that contain exactly the selected tags and no more.

Tag Display

Specifies what to do with the resulting tagged objects. The following options are available:

Show in a List

Shows the resulting tagged objects in a floating window, similar to the Show Referencing Objects dialog.

Select Tagged Objects

Selects all the resulting tagged objects.

Time Parameters

The Time tab (Figure 176) provides the following options:

Output Parameters

The Output tab (Figure 177) provides the following options:

Paths Parameters

The Paths tab (Figure 178) contains properties that control how occupant paths are generated and how the navigation mesh is triangulated. Generally, these settings should not be changed.

Behavior Parameters

The Behavior tab allows you to set options for Pathfinder’s two primary simulation modes: SFPE and Steering. To select a simulation mode, choose SFPE or Steering from the Behavior Mode drop-down box.

SFPE Mode Parameters

The SFPE mode uses the set of assumptions presented in the Engineering Guide to Human Behavior in Fire (SFPE 2019) and can give answers extremely similar to these hand calculations, depending on selected assumptions. In SFPE simulations, the mechanism that controls simulation movement is the door queue. The SFPE mode uses a simple set of assumptions and usually completes much faster than a comparable steering mode simulation in terms of CPU time.

The SFPE mode supports the following options:

Max Room Density

Controls the density at which doors will no longer admit occupants into a room. Using an artificially low value for this number will give faster evacuation times. Using a higher number 3.6 - 3.8 can cause extremely slow evacuation times. Using values above 3.8 pers/m2 can cause the simulation to become stuck due to the density dependent velocity calculation.

Door Flow Rate→Boundary Layer

This value is subtracted from both sides of a door to calculate the effective door width, controlling the flow rate equation. For example, with a Boundary Layer setting of 150 mm, a 1.0 m door would be reduced to a 0.7 m opening giving an \(F_\text{s_max}\) of (1.32 pers/s-m * 0.7 m) = 0.924 pers/s.

Door Flow Rate→Flow Rates at High Density

controls how specific flow for doors is calculated. Specific flow is a measure of occupants per unit of time per unit of effective width. For each door, the specific flow is multiplied by the effective door width to calculate the door flow rate in occupants per unit of time.

Use a Calculated Specific Flow

Specific flow is calculated as a function of room density for a room adjacent to the door. In cases of counterflow, the room with the higher density controls the combined specific flow of the door.

Always Use Max Specific Flow

Allows the door to flow at the optimum density. Minimum Speed Fraction* can be used to set a lower limit on occupant speed. Setting this value too low can cause evacuation times to increase significantly in cases of high initial loading of rooms or if the Max Room Density is set very high.

Steering Mode Parameters

The Steering mode is more dependent on collision avoidance and occupant interaction for the final answer and often gives answers more similar to experimental data than the SFPE mode (i.e. steering mode often reports faster evacuation times). Door queues are not explicitly used in Steering mode, though they do form naturally.

The Steering mode supports the following options:

Steering update interval

Specifies how often (in simulation time) to update the steering calculation. This could also be considered to be the cognitive response time of each occupant. The higher this number, the faster the simulation will run, as long as the simulation time step is less, but the poorer the decision making skills of each occupant will be.

Minimum flowrate factor

This is used when agents are deciding which doors to use when there are queues at the doors. The factor is multiplied by the door’s nominal flowrate to determine a minimum observed flowrate. A non-zero factor will cause a door to always appear to be flowing even if it is not. This helps prevents occupants from excessively switching doors when flowrates are very low; however, it can also cause occupants to stick with the same door even if it cannot flow any more, such as a door into a refuge room that has filled completely near the door. If occupants are refusing to leave a blocked door into a room when other doors are available, try setting this parameter to 0.

Collision Handling

Controls whether occupants avoid one another and can collide with each other.

Enable Forced Separation

When enabled, this will cause occupants to attempt to always strictly maintain their Personal Distance (Advanced Tab). When disabled, Personal Distance will only apply while queueing.

Limit Door Flow Rate

When checked, this imposes a maximum flow rate on doors unless they have it explicitly turned off (Door Properties). The flow rate for each door is calculated from the Boundary Layer and Specific Flow, similarly to SFPE Mode. The difference between Steering and SFPE Modes is that Steering does not allow flow rates to be based off room density.

Miscellaneous Parameters

The Miscellaneous tab (Figure 181) provides rarely-changed options, including the following:

Simulating via Command-line

Simulations can be run from the command line using the testsim.bat script located in the Pathfinder installation directory. The following sections detail the two supported use-cases for this script.

testsim.bat "full_model_path"

testsim.bat "path"

testsim.bat "path1" "path2" ... "pathN"